So, I need some ideas:
I love to send people cards or fun little gifts for their birthdays. One year (about a billion years ago, before the post office got all uppity about things being perfectly flat) I figured out that I could mail a little pad of post it notes to my friends for the price of a first class stamp. That year all of my friends got cute sticky note pads (with a Happy Birthday note on the front page) for their birthday instead of cards. I spent less than I would have for cards, and they got something cute and practical. Everyone seemed to like the twist.
Fast forward a lot of a couple years. I need something fun to send to kids for their birthdays. We have lots of long distance friends (a “bonus” of military life) and long distance cousins. Some of them we send gifts to; most we just send a card or some sort of little fun thing. This year it seems that I’m out of ideas. So what can we send all of our friends and cousins instead of cards??? FYI – most of the kids are in the 3 yo to 7 yo range. It needs to be something flat. It can be a cute homemade card idea or a tiny gift idea or anything that will be fun for kids to open on their birthdays.
Any ideas are appreciated!
I think you need to try a new post office and find one that lets you be more creative! We’ve found that ours will mail just about anything you can put a stamp on!!
We’ve mailed beachballs – use a sharpie to write the address and happy birthday message…..or those punching balls with the wrist straps. You can write a message on them, deflate, and when they receive it and blow it up, they’ll see your message! You don’t even have to put them in an envelope if a stamp will stick to it, and you can write the address on the actual item…
Perhaps I should have been more clear: I would like it to be flat, so that I can buy the postage ahead of time and just mail it from the box in my front yard. SO much easier than going to the post office with three or four kids in tow! Love the beach ball idea though – especially now that I could use some sun!
How about mailing some Mad Libs/Soduko pages/activity book pages? They are fun for kids and flat! You can usually find activity books for pretty cheap, and one coudl go a long way if you just send a few in each letter. You could even make your own cover/titla page to personalize for each child.
Other ideas:
1. coloring pages — if you are artsy you could even draw your own. Or, take family photos and turn them into line drawings (using photoshop or some other photo editing tool). It would be fun for the kids to color in pictures or their family/friends! You can also find lots of coloring pages online, and coloring books are pretty inexpensive.
2. dot to dot — you can draw your own, have your kids draw them, or find them online
3. crosswords or wordsearch — when i was teaching English in Prague, I used to do this all the time with our vocab words. You can find places online to make your own, or you can just do your own free hand.
I love reading your blog….we are also on a journey to Ethiopia. We hope to bring home a little boy (or siblings) sometime this year.
I wish this was my idea, but its not…this year my smart sister-in-law sent my kids bookmarks in their birthday cards. My kids loved them. And there are some really fun bookmarks out there!
When I was a TA in kindergarten we made shark cards. VERY cool. You could add some googley eyes and make them really neat, and all kids like a pop up card. Here’s a link to a site with step-by-step directions
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/Sharkcard.shtml
All the things I can think of aren’t flat…. beads, puzzles, hair barrettes… I would think you could find paper doll patterns on line. You can’t go wrong with things that have kids’ names on them. Older kids would like something like a subscription to Club Penguin for a month. I’m embarrassed to leave this reply since this is usually something I’m good at!
Japanese paper balls are fantastic- super light and easy to stick in a card. They are a bit like beachballs except that they are made out of paper and have a hole in them. so you blow into the ball and then use as a toy. kids are mesmerized by these and play with them for hours since they’re so delicate. magic cabin usually sells them in their party favor section.